Science

KEY POINTS

Establish routines and expectations within difficult school community school before addressing quality teacher issues
Team teaching works well
Peer review provides vehicle for conversation and improves quality of teaching
Toronto - Teacher Development Position created to facilitate professional development
Each school had new leadership teams - new ideas and new emphasis
Very visible Principal around school - interacts with students
Students had pride in their schools
Relationships built between staff and troubled students
All studies show it is the time with an effective subject teacher that makes the difference - Do we give our students enough time in class with their teachers?
Falling behind the Asian countries - can they be compared? Can be great cultural differences - do they create rote learners or problem solvers?
Student feedback to teachers is very valuable
Learning environment should be attractive, stimulating, displaying student work

RELEVANCE TO NOTRE DAME

Need time to develop collaborative teaching activities
Leadership to provide clear guidance and consultation
Time needed to develop mentoring with students
Staff are isolated from students in staff work area - at Emmaus staff and students constantly interact - provides more opportunities for mentoring
Evaluation of school teaching programs needed to determine how effective our practices are
LE Mentors - not necessarily trained in the areas where they work. Is this the best practice?
Could we do more team teaching with two teachers collaborating together with two classes?

STUDENT PERFORMANCE ANALYSER
1. What does this data tell you about their learning?

We need to focus on spelling, writing and grammar & punctuation in our learning.
When comparing 2008-2010 with 2009-2011 growth, the growth between 2008-2010 was better than that from 2009-2011
Across the board, education in the state isn't meeting its own benchmarks - even the state data does not meet the 'VELS' levels that the students should be at.
Gender differences are massive in terms of writing, spelling and grammar - boys have a much larger number of people below expected VELS level than girls.
We need to have more hands on activities but also work on improving literacy skills across the board.
The number of students below average from 2009 - 2011 is consistent - we are not extended the students to try and bring their levels up, they are staying where they are. Although there is growth, there is not much movement from the 'below expected level' to 'at expected level' or 'above expected level'.

2. What implications does this have for my classroom practice? What implications does this have for the curriculum of our domain?

Perhaps we need to bring in more focus on spelling and language in Science
Get students to hand write information - particularly practical reports.
We need to get students working towards interpreting data and improving their numeracy and literacy in terms of the Science curriculum
Focus on Science literacy - ready, selecting appropriate words, summarising, paraphrasing, etc.
Encourage the use of computers - does spell checking help with spelling? Does this make students rethink their spelling and actually learn how to spell the words?